Assad officials reportedly in Athens and found refuge!

Greek security services believe that Syrian officials of the Assad regime have found temporary refuge in Greece in the last few days, mainly in tourist resorts and in Attica, where they have luxury properties.

Officials of the Assad regime managed to escape with their families from Damascus and Aleppo to Greece by boat and are waiting for the opportunity to fly to Europe and the USA, Parapolitika reported.

The Greek National Intelligence Service (EYP) is wary of this. Since 2012, when the Syrian ambassador was expelled from Athens as persona non grata, Greek-Syrian relations were maintained with a few diplomatic employees. EYP believes these diplomats are influenced by Turkey, Russia, or Iran.

It is reported that diplomats of the Arab country "continue to be uncooperative" in identifying Syrians suspected of entering Greece illegally, using the pretext of the long-standing state of war and the destruction of state archives.

Furthermore, it has been established that some extremists are being issued genuine passports and legal documents, with which they travel unhindered to Europe.

This fact was also pointed out by the German Minister of the Interior, Nancy Faeser, to the Minister of Migration Policy, Nikos Panagiotopoulos, during their meeting on December 2.

The case of Mohammed al-Jolani, the approximately 45-50-year-old mastermind of the jihadist invasion of Syria, demonstrates the shocking lack of security.

According to Parapolitika, some of his 14 passports were checked between 2013 and 2018 at the airports of Kos, Lesvos, Corfu, and Thessaloniki. He travelled to Belgium, the Netherlands, and possibly Germany, using the names Golani, Abu Ashraf, Fatih and others.

Similar tactics were followed by his accomplices from the terrorist organisation “Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS).

In 2016, Jolani renounced his ties to al-Qaeda and, in recent years, has attempted to redefine his group's identity as a more moderate Islamist movement.

In October, while Jolani was planning the attack on regime forces, HTS was in communication with other revolutionary factions in the north, which are part of the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army.

As for Turkey’s role, diplomacy estimates that until recently, Ankara supported some of the militant groups participating in the attack but had a more complicated relationship with HTS.

Turkey hosts more Syrian refugees than any other country (over 3,000,000, according to government figures), and Turkish bureaucrats have long been concerned that any new outbreak of violence near the southern border could trigger a new wave of refugees.

The second thing under investigation is whether HTS have a headquarters base in Greece, centred in the South Aegean, between Crete and Rhodes.

Before the summer, Europol reportedly asked the Greek branch for a detailed report on 2 of the approximately 80 convicted terrorists - a Syrian and an Iraqi, aged 30-35, who were released from prison in Northern Greece in November 2023 and have since disappeared despite the restrictive conditions.

It is believed that they reside or were residing until recently on an island in the Southeast Aegean and were identified due to the widespread use of the telecommunications systems of Turkey and Syria.

They were connected to the rebel raid on government buildings in Aleppo and Saraqeb, Idlib province, in the northwest.

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